How to Start a Fitness Blog

The relevancy of the information you provide is another essential facet of starting a successful fitness blog. There’s a lot of bogus information out there and identifying correct information is often the key to providing good content online. Health and fitness is an area that’s particularly rife with inaccurate information, misinterpreted studies, and, ironically, just plain unhealthy advice. You don’t need to start doing grade-school-level research, but it is important to learn how to search for reputable sources and identify misinformation when you see it. Check out my post about writing good content here.

Why is this important?

Well, for one, it’s hard to build a dedicated following if what you’re saying is obviously untrue. Most people would probably like to believe that you can get fit while eating candy bars and not working out, but if what you’re saying doesn’t actually deliver results, you probably won’t get as much traffic to your blog as you’d like. Providing useful, realistic information is the best way to secure a dedicated audience that grows incrementally over time. Plus, you could theoretically open yourself up to some liability issues if you aren’t careful with what you say online.

Getting Visitors To Your Blog

Accuracy and good writing are also important because search engines like Google do seem to take informational and writing quality into account in their page rankings. Time was when you could just stuff a bunch of keywords into an article and call it a day, but that kind of writing isn’t satisfying to a reader at all and it’s not good business for a search engine to refer their clients to bad results. Professional marketers pay attention to metrics like bounce rate, the percentage of people who leave a site after reading just one page, and you should too. Your search engine performance is essential in getting new people to your site, which is an especially important consideration when you’re just starting out and don’t yet have a strong social media following. As you expand, search engine performance stays important because it’s one of the metrics you can use to prove your worth to brands that might want to partner with you for some sponsored content or giveaways.

So, overall, it pays to actually create useful content for your fitness blog. What qualifies as “good?” 

Well, what makes sense to you might not make sense to everyone. So, before you start posting a bunch of content to your blog, you should write a sample post first and send it either to a professional editor or a few trusted friends whose feedback you can trust. There’s a certain art to explaining things clearly and if you want your readers to actually be able to use the workouts you’re suggesting, you’ll need to explain your process so even a complete beginner can understand it.

As part of being clear with your content, providing visual details can also be essential. You’ll want to give yourself a decent photography setup for this. The good news is that most gyms are so well-lit and provide such a natural background for fitness photography that you can probably just shoot photos on a tripod in your gym. Make sure to check with management first, though, since some chain gyms may have policies against letting members film or shoot photos on-site. If you attend a small, independently owned gym, you can talk to the management and offer to promote the gym on your blog in exchange for being able to shoot photos there. Plan your photo shoots or recording sessions for a slow time of day so you aren’t inconveniencing anyone or having to jostle to find room.

Of course, social media a huge way for fitness professionals to promote their blogs. If you haven't already, setup an account on Instagram and a vlog on Youtube that matches your blog's domain name.

This foundation will make it easy to get your fitness blog up and running, but the hard work is up to you. Luckily, you’re already dealing with a topic that relates to discipline so it should be no sweat!